


Savages

by radioaktiv



Series: Fallout Prompts [5]
Category: Fallout 3
Genre: Asphyxiation, Attempted Murder, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Hurt No Comfort, Killing, Self-Defense, Short One Shot, Threats of Rape/Non-Con, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:28:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioaktiv/pseuds/radioaktiv
Summary: “C’mon pretty thing, I’ll make it nice and quick!”Vaulting over a tumbled desk to the adjacent room, she reached for a door on the other side, swinging it open just to have her view cursed with more broken concrete and wood. No. No no no.Willingness to trust the good in people plays badly, yet another lesson for a green vault dweller struggling to survive alone in the Capital Wasteland.Written for Whumptober day 19, "Asphyxiation".
Series: Fallout Prompts [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1396564
Kudos: 6





	Savages

**Author's Note:**

> This is the event hinted in the ["Stitches"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23281624) ficlet.

Boots echoed in the empty corridor, each step desperately out of rhythm. The lights flickered as she passed, turning the walls narrower and the corridors longer. Her legs were dangerously close to giving up, muscles protesting in terrible shocks that ran through every fiber at each stride.

The man coming after her ran too, but not as fast. His voice carried an unsettling confidence as he taunted every turn behind her between laughter. “You’re a spunky one, aren’t ya?” She heard a trash can purposefully knocked down to thwart him being kicked out of the way. “Let’s see how long that lasts!”

Farren skidded on the dust and dirt when a brisk turn led her to a dead end of rubble impossible to crawl through. Despair clutched at her chest, ejecting all the air out of her lungs and pouring more fear into her bloodstream.

She leaped through an open door to her right, praying it’d have an exit to the other side of the debris. Bookshelves and desks were thrown without care everywhere, and she had to dodge furniture.

“C’mon pretty thing, I’ll make it nice and quick!”

Vaulting over a tumbled desk to the adjacent room, she reached for a door on the other side, swinging it open just to have her view cursed with more broken concrete and wood. _No. No no no._

The man emerged through the door threateningly calm, expression rigid as he scanned the room. He hadn’t looked particularly welcoming, but she had made a point of not judging people by their looks. It had been a terrible, terrible mistake.

He smiled when he set his eyes on her, several teeth just as missing as his humanity.

“There you are. Now, I don’t like people booting off when I’m talkin.”

Farren took a step back at each he went forward, tears hanging from her lashes and completely breathless. Looking to the opposite side of the door, to the windows, she considered her options. The raider followed her eyes, then scoffed gruffly.

“Whatchya gonna do? Jump? Not worth dying over havin a good time, is it now?”

Her back hit the wall, creating a chasm within her stomach.

Cornered.

She discovered then the immense difference between fearing for your life and fearing for the right to your own body. Albeit parallel, there was a contrasting dread on the latter, a humiliating realization that you’re being preyed on by a species that should see you as an equal.

It was being face to face with a different kind of animal.

The man’s hands worked to unbuckle his belt as he smirked confidently. “You vaulties and those damn suits, how ya get that thing off, anyway?” He struggled with the strap, brains lacking as brawns were abundant. “At least helps us know which are the dumb ones.”

With a lot to lose, she turned to what she had left in her. Instinct and denial. Clenching her teeth, Farren fists hoisted up as her legs planted firmly on the trash-covered ground, blood pumping so strongly her head felt like exploding.

He just smiled at her, arrogance as sickening as his intentions. “Ah, ain’t that cute? S’okay, I like the fiery ones.” Leaving his belt half-undone, he took a step closer and leaned towards her, pointing his chin. “Right then, gimme a good one.”

The man’s smile vanished when her fist hit his face, the sound that came from the impact hard to decipher if from her hand or his jaw.

A pistol flew away when he stumbled back, eyes and mouth wide open in shock as he held his chin. Farren’s knuckles protested as loudly as her wrist. She would not deliver a decent one a second time.

His face shifted from perplexity to realization, then anger.

“You know what- _I’m done being nice._ ”

He lunged at her with bare hands, both tumbling out of balance.

She drove his hands away once and swung a knee in his stomach, but it did little through the armor. As physically able as she was, her opponents had always been teens her age with barely any actual fighting experience. Punching Butch into submission wasn’t the same as wrestling a grown, violent man.

Ultimately she ended up with a bloodied lip and incapable, shaking hands when he slapped her away from the wall and grabbed her by the neck. Farren tried to squirm out of his grasp, but this only led her to fall with the raider over her, spine hitting the ground mercilessly. He wasn’t joking. He was done being nice.

His lock around her throat tightened exponentially, and air became difficult to pass at each second. “I don’t need you alive to have fun.”

With windpipes compressed painfully, tears ran freely while she bucked to no avail - he’d straddled her and that was enough, being way heavier than she was.

It got harder to think.

If she wasn’t struggling, his grip on her would have already been fatal. Clawing at his hands was futile, and the more she gasped for air, more her throat burned in agony. Darkness crept to the corners of her eyes.

Some last spur of adrenaline pumped fight-or-flight instinct into her dying senses, and she scrambled for something, _anything_ solid, hand stretching towards the unknown void of the room. Her fingers grasped something rough, and she held onto it for literally dear life.

With a single motion that depleted all remaining strength, she aimed for the head, arm moving in an arch. It hit him in the face with lucky accuracy. A nauseating _crack_ came from the man’s skull and he immediately slumped over her full weight, limp.

Farren choked a hoarse gasp once her air-flow was free, throat stinging. Coughing profusely as her lungs scrambled for the missing air of the past seconds, she rolled onto her stomach, pushing the man aside with the act, eyes pressed shut.

Dragged by her knees and elbows, she lifted herself off the floor and touched her hurting neck with one hand. Her senses crept back in confusing waves, and more than once she forced herself to sit straight to remain conscious. Sometimes it felt like she would throw up, but nothing came out of her stomach. There was at least some relief when no blood came out of her windpipes.

Passage of time became an alien concept. When her eyes pried open, there was a significant pool of blood oozing out the unmoving man. Exhaustion came almost cripplingly, but a sixth sense nudged that danger was still imminent.

The raider groaned, limbs twitching into life.

She crawled to the pistol on the floor, dirt and debris on the ground scratching her face as she fell midway in panic- but still hooked one finger in the trigger guard. A single shot was fired at the man’s head, painting the wall behind with blood, brain matter, and skull. She hesitated a few seconds with trembling hands, then emptied the barrel into his lifeless body.

Her aim remained for a few seconds. Left alone with blood ringing in her ears, desolation finally conquered her. The pistol slipped off her grasp as a pitiful sob croaked from her throat, still hoarse from the abuse.

She sat and fought back the vertigo that almost sent her back to the ground, pushed away from the gory scene until a desk made going further impossible. Abandonment hit harder than it ever had, guilt and frustration a harsher punishment than the raider’s hands.

Confidence dwindled at the realization of her naivety. Trust was a precious coin out there, and she was learning in the worst way possible - by paying in full.

 _“I can’t do this.”_ Her voice was but a whimper, more of a strangled whistle. Forehead pressed into her bruised knees, arms wrapped around her shaking legs, tears ran down her cheeks. _“Dad, I can’t do this.”_

**Author's Note:**

> [Savages - MARINA and the Diamonds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxaTAFXgykU)  
> Kudos to my beta readers [lookbluesoup](https://lookbluesoup.tumblr.com/) and [saltsealed](https://saltsealed.tumblr.com/)! <3


End file.
